Ebola is kind of a big deal right now, with people in the US worried about new cases in the States, and the fact that we’re already hearing reports of health workers breaking quarantine and containment protocols. So let’s make an ebola TV series! But while an event series based around the virus might seem like opportunism, in fact producers Lynda Obst and Ridley Scott have been working to adapt Richard Preston‘s 1994 book The Hot Zone for the past year, after originally optioning the material two decades ago. Read More »

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“It doesn’t get any better than this,” screams one of the most evil men in the world. “Me and David Skylark, in my tank, blasting Katy Perry!” The horrific dictator is right. The mix of pop music, foul language and male machinery is just about the perfect amount of awesome on a cold, snowy Vancouver day.

David Skylark is a character played by James Franco in The Interview, Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg’s follow-up to the massive 2013 hit This is the End. The faux entertainment journalist is driving in the tank of Kim Jong Un (played by Randall Park), the North Korean dictator who is preparing to be interviewed by Skylark. Oh, and by the way, the CIA has asked Skylark and his producer Aaron (Rogen) to kill him.

Though the tank and North Korean setting are fabricated on a soundstage in Rogen and Goldberg’s hometown of Burnaby, British Columbia (just outside of Vancouver) that Katy Perry love isn’t fabricated. Everyone on set is singing, laughing, and that’s just the beginning of the madness that went down on December 10, 2013, the 42nd and final day of shooting on The Interview, which hits theaters December 25. Read More »

Bryan Cranston won a Tony playing President Lyndon Baines Johnson in the play All the Way, and now he’s taking the role to television. Cranston will reprise his take on LBJ for an HBO Films version of All the Way, which will be scripted by playwright Robert Schenkkan. Read More »

North Korea is mad at Seth Rogen and James Franco. The country’s supreme leader, Kim Jong-un, has denounced their upcoming film, The Interview. Which makes sense, really, given that The Interview is about a would-be journalist (Franco) and his producer (Rogen) who are given the chance to interview the dictator. But a clandestine organization sees an opportunity there, and recruits the pair to assassinate Kim instead. Pretty easy to understand, then, why the leader wouldn’t be all that into the film. Read More »

Briefly: The attack on the US diplomatic mission and nearby CIA Annex in Benghazi on September 11, 2012 has become a lingering scandal for the Obama administration, with many people unsatisfied with both the White House’s method of dealing with the attack, and the way that information about the event has been doled out in the aftermath.

Now Paramount is buying rights to a forthcoming book, Thirteen Hours: A Firsthand Account Of What Really Happened In Benghazi, by Mitchell Zuckoff with the assistance of surviving members of the Annex Security Team who were present during the attack. Chuck Hogan, who wrote the novel that became The Town, and co-authored The Strain with Guillermo del Toro, will script a film based on the book.

The book purports to be a firsthand account of the attack and its aftermath, which left four Americans dead, one of whom was U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens. Since the book hasn’t yet been released, there’s no knowing how accurate it is, and whether or not it paints the attack and subsequent response in any partisan light.

Briefly: The second season of House of Cards won’t hit Netflix for another ten days, but a third season is already a definite. The show has just been renewed by Netflix, so exec producers David Fincher and Beau Willimon have a mandate to go back to work. Not that this is a surprise, given that Netflix execs have pledged to continue the show. But it’s good to know that we’ll have thirteen more hours of Kevin Spacey as power-hungry politician Frank Underwood, and (even more so) Robin Wright as Underwood’s iron-willed wife. [LAT]

While addressing the issue of school shootings last year, NRA VP Wayne LaPierre decried on Hollywood’s “blood-soaked films” for promoting a culture of violence. Now Hollywood is getting ready to fight back, and to put the blame back on the NRA’s shoulders.

Producer Harvey Weinstein revealed that he and Meryl Streep are gearing up to make The Senator’s Wife, described as a Mr. Smith Goes to Washington-esque drama targeting the gun lobby. Weinstein, a staunch Obama supporter, is making no bones about his stance on the issue — his hope is that the movie will damage the gun manufacturing industry and make the NRA “wish they weren’t alive.” More details on the film after the jump.

Here’s the full trailer for the second season of House of Cards, and it is just full of drama, scheming, anger, and all the devious political maneuvering that made the first season so great. There are even more hints of murder here — is a new victim going to be ground up in one of Frank Underwood’s ruthless power ploys, and not just in a political sense?

Season two once again stars Kevin Spacey as Underwood, who begins the season by assuming the office of the Vice President of the United States, and the supporting cast includes a mix of returning players and new faces: Robin Wright, Kate Mara, Michael Gill, Gerald McRaney, Michael Kelly, Mahershala Ali, Sebastian Arcelus, Kristen Connolly, Sam Page and Molly Parker.

Briefly: Some of the best director commentaries out there are from David Fincher, whose discussions about each of his films are super-detailed and free of the “you had to be there” stories that make some commentaries little more than a genial hangout session with the filmmakers. Hanging out is great, but if you want a commentary you might learn from, Fincher is a good bet.

So it’s great that Netflix has added director commentaries to the first season of House of Cards, which Fincher produced, and which features him as director of two episodes. There are also commentaries from James Foley (Glengarry Glen Ross), Joel Schumacher (The Client), Charles McDougall (The Good Wife), Carl Franklin (Homeland), and Allen Coulter (The Sopranos).

This is all a promo, more or less, for the second season of House of Cards, which will be available in its entirety on February 14. As promos go, it’s a great one. Get to the commentaries through the subtitle option on your Netflix portal of choice.